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India is one of the premier
technology countries in the world.
According to one forecast, India
will overtake the US as the world’s
largest developer population center
by 2024.
1
India is also one of the
leading countries for mobile app
downloads, due to its more than
500 million smartphone users.
2
At the same time, as we will show in this report,
India also has a very strong App Economy.
We estimate that India has 1.674 million App
Economy jobs, as of August 2019. That’s up
from 1.208 million as of 2016, a 39 percent
increase. By comparison, the United States had
2.246 million App Economy jobs as of April 2019,
and the European Union (plus Switzerland and
Norway) had 2.093 million App Economy jobs as
of July 2019.
BACKGROUND
Apple’s opening of the App Store in 2008,
followed by Android Market (now Google Play)
and other app stores, created a way for iOS and
Android developers to write mobile applications,
or “apps”, that could run on smartphones
anywhere. These apps became an essential
part of daily life for most people, and an
indispensable tool for business.
The rise of the App Economy has unleashed
an abundance of “app developers.” These
workers create, maintain, and support an ever-
expanding range of apps. Mobile games are
SUMMARY
MICHAEL MANDEL
AND ELLIOTT LONG
SEPTEMBER 2019
The App Economy
in India
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the most visible part of the App Economy, but
not the most important. Mobile apps include
such key uses as shopping applications, home
banking programs, smart automobile interfaces,
healthcare apps for monitoring patients,
and sophisticated apps for running
manufacturing plants.
The innovative design of the App Store lowered
the barriers to entry for mobile app developers
all around the world. It created a low-cost
mechanism for distributing apps to users
that allowed even the smallest of software
developers to reap global economies of scale.
In an important sense, the App Store was a key
step in fostering a global entrepreneurial culture.
At the same time, large companies have realized
that mobile apps are the new “front door” to
their business, a way of reaching customers and
potential customers. Similarly, we have reached
a tipping point where more and more people of
all income levels have smartphones, allowing
governments and nonprots to use mobile apps
to deliver social services and as an interface
for important citizen interactions. This change,
while slow, has reached a tipping point.
Today, the growth of the App Economy
workforce in a country reflects how quickly
that country is embracing the next stage of
the Information Revolution, which depends on
mobile technology to digitize physical industries
such as manufacturing and healthcare. Looking
forward, the growth of the App Economy is likely
to continue, as people increasingly use mobile
apps as their interface to their home, cars,
schools, and healthcare providers. Indeed, the
rise of the Internet of Things will guarantee the
need for more and more highly functional and
sophisticated apps, serving an essential role in
interacting with our environment.
MEASURING THE APP ECONOMY
As the App Economy grows in signicance
globally, it becomes essential to have a
consistent set of App Economy job estimates so
that policymakers can compare their country’s
performance with that of other countries.
However, ofcial economics statistics do not
provide an easy way to measure the size of the
App Economy.
In response, PPI developed a methodology
based on a systematic analysis of online job
postings. In particular, we look for job postings
that call for app-related skills such as knowledge
of iOS or Android. This methodology can be
applied to a wide variety of countries, languages,
and economic environments.
3
Our goal is to produce a set of globally-
consistent and credible estimates for App
Economy employment by individual countries, by
broad geographical regions, and in some cases
by major cities. The ultimate objective is to be
able to track the growth of the App Economy
globally, and to see which countries are
benetting the most. Ideally, we should be able
to link App Economy growth to policy measures
implemented by governments.
For this study, a worker is in the App Economy
if he or she is works in:
• An information and communications
technology (ICT) related job that uses App
Economy skills— the ability to develop,
maintain, or support mobile applications. We
will call this a “core” App Economy job. Core
App Economy jobs include app developers;
software engineers whose work requires
knowledge of mobile applications; security
engineers who help keep mobile apps safe
from being hacked; and help desk workers
who support use of mobile apps.
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• A non-ICT job (such as human resources,
marketing, or sales) that supports core App
Economy jobs in the same enterprise. We will
call this an “indirect” App Economy job.
• A job in the local economy that is
supported by the income flowing to core
and indirectApp Economy workers. These
“spillover” jobs include local retail and
restaurant jobs, construction jobs, and all the
other necessary services.
To estimate the number of core App Economy
jobs, we use a multi-step procedure based on
data from the universe of online job postings,
and described in detail in the methodology
appendix. The source of the data is Indeed.
co.in, which allows us to use Boolean search to
identify App economy-related job postings. (The
appendix discusses why we use Indeed.co.in
instead of Naukri.com, a much better-known
Indian jobaggregator).
Job postings are a powerful source of
information about the skills being required
by employers. For example, if a job posting
requires that the job candidate have experience
developing apps for iOS—the iPhone/iPad
operating system—then we can reasonably
conclude that the posting refers to a core App
Economy job.
However, the number of job postings does not
immediately translate into employment levels.
The process for estimating the relationship
between jobs postings and employment was
initially described in a series of papers starting in
2012, when we produced the rst-ever estimate
of the U.S. App Economy. We use an improved
version of that methodology here, including a
conservative set of multipliers relating indirect
and spillover jobs to core App Economy jobs.
RESULTS
Table 1 presents an estimate of App Economy
jobs in India. We estimate that India has 1.674
million App Economy jobs as of August 2019.
This gure includes a conservative estimate of
indirect and spillover jobs. That’s a 39 percent
gain compared to 1.208 million App Economy
jobs in May 2016, the rst estimate we made of
India’s App Economy.
Our methodology also allows us to estimate
the relative share of mobile operating systems
in India’s App Economy. We nd that the iOS
ecosystem includes 873,000 jobs, and
the Android ecosystem includes 1.359 million
jobs. The two sum to more than the total
because many App Economy jobs belong to
both ecosystems.
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Table 2 compares India’s App Economy with
the United States and the European Union
(we currently do not have a public estimate
for China).
TABLE 2: HOW INDIA’S APP ECONOMY COMPARES INTERNATIONALLY
*28 EU countries plus Switzerland and Norway
Data: Progressive Policy Institute, Indeed.com
How do these gures compare to other
estimates? In April 2015, the Indian Council for
Research on International Economic Relations
(ICRIER) released a well-researched report on
the Indian App Economy.
4
Based on industry
estimates, ICRIER put the number of app
developers in India at 75,000 in 2014, projecting
that the number would rise to 150,000 to
160,000 by 2016. This is what ICRIER calls
direct employment. By contrast, our estimate
for core app economy employment in 2016 was
roughly400,000.
In making a comparison between ICRIER’s
estimate and ours, the key point is that
ICRIER focused mainly on the app developer
industry. By comparison our denition of a core
app economy job included a broader set of
occupations that require knowledge of iOS or
Android, including ICT professionals developing
COUNTRY MILLIONS OF APP ECONOMY JOBS DATE OF ESTIMATE
INDIA
1.674 August 2019
UNITED STATES
2.246 April 2019
EUROPEAN UNION*
2.093 July 2019
TABLE 1: INDIA’S APP ECONOMY (THOUSANDS OF JOBS)
Data: PPI, Indeed.com
iOS and Android jobs sum to more than total because many App Economy jobs are in both ecosystems
APP ECONOMY JOBS, MAY 2016 APP ECONOMY JOBS, AUGUST 2019
TOTAL
1,208 1,674
IOS ECOSYSTEM
641 873
ANDROID ECOSYSTEM
922 1,359
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apps within large non-tech companies such
as banks, media companies and retailers; ICT
professionals focused on improving security for
mobile applications, an increasingly important
task; and help desk workers for mobile
applications. In other words, our set of core
App Economy workers does not stop at people
working for app developer companies. That may
explain part of the difference.
REGIONAL RESULTS AND EXAMPLES
Our methodology allows us to estimate App
Economy employment by state and territory, or
urban area, by looking at the distribution of App
Economy job postings. Table 3 below reports the
top 10 states and territories, as ranked by App
Economy employment. Table 4 reports on App
Economy employment for the ten largest cities
in India.
TABLE 3. TOP TEN STATES AND TERRITORIES
FOR APP EMPLOYMENT, AUGUST 2019
TABLE 4: APP JOBS IN INDIA’S TEN LARGEST CITIES,
AUGUST 2019
*Includes jobs in urban area out to 50 km
Data: Progressive Policy Institute, Indeed.com
*Based on jobs within 50 km of city
Data: Progressive Policy Institute, Indeed.com
THOUSANDS OF
APP ECONOMY JOBS
Karnataka 368
Maharashtra 283
Delhi* 248
Tamil Nadu 142
Telangana 133
Gujarat 114
Uttar Pradesh 108
Haryana 94
Kerala 61
West Bengal 49
THOUSANDS OF
APP ECONOMY JOBS
Bangalore 362
New Delhi 248
Mumbai 137
Hyderabad 128
Pune 113
Chennai 101
Ahmedabad 66
Kolkata 43
Jaipur 27
Surat 24
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We can see that the Indian App Economy is
creating jobs across a wide range of industries
and geographies. As of August 2019, digital
studio Cotech Innovations was hiring a mobile
app developer with Android experience in
Bengaluru, Karnataka. Web development
company Detecvision was seeking a hybrid
mobile app developer procient in iOS and
Android in Delhi. IBM was searching for iOS and
Android application developers in Hyderabad,
Telangana. Software company Highprosoft
was looking for a mobile app developer with
experience in iOS and Android in Kanpur, Uttar
Pradesh. IT consulting rm Alian Software was
hiring a junior mobile app developer with Android
experience in Anand, Gujarat.
Looking at the state of Karnataka in particular,
JP Morgan Chase was seeking a software
engineer with knowledge of iOS in Bengaluru.
Ride hailing company GrabTaxi was searching
for a mobile software engineer with experience
in Android in Bengaluru. Consulting rm
Accenture was looking for an iOS application
developer in Bengaluru. Media-tech startup
ZAPR was hiring an Android developer in
Bengaluru. Education technology company
PowerSchool was seeking a software engineer
with knowledge of iOS and Android in Bengaluru.
Workforce technology company tapplent was
searching for an Android developer in Bengaluru.
In Maharashtra, marketing technology rm
Crowdre was looking for a mobile developer
with experience in iOS and Android in Navi
Mumbai. Banking company HSBC was
hiring an iOS developer in Pune. Travel fare
aggregator Priceline.com was seeking a
senior iOS developer in Mumbai. Credit Suisse
was searching for an iOS developer in Pune.
Consulting rm Capgemini was looking for
an Android developer in Pune. Barclays was
searching for a senior Android developer in
Pune. As of June 2019, sports-focused digital
rm Sportz Interactive was hiring an Android
developer in Mumbai.
Customer experience platform Genesys
was seeking Android and iOS mobile
application developers in Chennai, Tamil
Nadu. Transportation and logistics software
company NDOT was searching for an Android
developer in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Logistics
company Pegasus Industries and Packaging
was looking for a mobile application developer
with knowledge of Android in Chennai. Elevator
company KONE was hiring a senior mobile
project manager with experience in iOS and
Android in Chennai.
In Telangana, transportation rm Best Bus was
seeking an Android developer in Hyderabad.
Media company Thomson Reuters was
searching for an iOS developer in Hyderabad.
Transportation and defense technology rm
Cubic Corporation was looking for a software
engineer with experience in developing mobile
applications in Hyderabad. Gaming studio Must
Play Games was hiring Android developers in
Hyderabad. As of July 2019, entertainment
software company Electronics Arts was
searching for a QA project lead with experience
in Android and iOS in Hyderabad.
Taxi technology company Insigno Quipment
Technologies was seeking a software engineer
with experience in Android in Ahmedabad,
Gujarat. Fintech startup Tarrakki was looking
for an iOS developer in Ahmedabad. MasterCard
was hiring a senior engineer with experience in
iOS and Android in Vadodara, Gujarat. Banking
software company MakTech was searching
for an Android application developer in Surat,
Gujarat.
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In Uttar Pradesh, logistics company Pitney
Bowes was seeking a database developer with
knowledge of iOS and Android in Noida. As of
July 2019, online food community TagTaste
was looking for an Android developer in Noida.
Medical clinic aggregator Medihub was hiring
an Android developer in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Software company Adobe was searching for an
Android engineer in Noida.
In the union territory of Delhi, personal nance
app Faayda was seeking senior Android
developers in New Delhi. Coupon provider
MyDala was looking for a QA engineer in Saket.
As of July 2019, education technology rm
Learnix Edutech Private Limited was hiring
an Android developer in Delhi. Social media
company eSocial was searching for a backend
developer with experience in Android and iOS
in Delhi.
CONCLUSION
We anticipate fast-growing demand for a
new generation of apps to act as the human
interface for increasingly-digitized physical
industries. Companies will need internal apps
for their workers, and external apps for their
suppliers and customers. For example, digital
manufacturing will rely on mobile devices and
apps to help workers interact with networked
machinery in factories.
From that perspective, the App Economy could
be a potential source of jobs for India going
forward, especially given current government
goals for economic and employment growth.
Moreover, mobile apps can be shipped overseas
easily, helping to boost India’s export earnings.
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Methodology Appendix
Since 2012, we have developed and improve our methodology for
estimating App Economy employment. The methodology uses online
job postings for workers with app-related skills as a real-time measure
of App Economy employment. This methodology can be applied to a
wide variety of countries, languages, and economic environments.
As noted in the paper, an ICT-related job that uses App Economy
skills—the ability to develop, maintain, or support mobile applications--
is a “core” App Economy job. How do we tell which jobs require App
Economy skills? The key is to look at help wanted ads—also called job
postings–where enterprises actually describe the skills and knowledge
they are looking for.
The key quantities that we need to estimate are:
Postings(App) = number of job postings for core App Economy jobs
Postings (ICT) = number of job postings for ICT jobs
Jobs(ICT) = number of ICT jobs
Jobs (App) = number of core App Economy jobs.
We use the rst three quantities to estimate the number of core app
economy jobs:
(1) Jobs(App) = Postings(App)/Postings(ICT)*Jobs(ICT)
In other words, the share of core app economy job postings in ICT job
postings is used to estimate the share of core app economy jobs in the
total number of ICT jobs. To put it another way, if jobs that require App
Economy skills are 19% of ICT job postings, we assume that they are
19% of ICT jobs as well.
By rearranging terms, this is equivalent to saying that the ratio of ICT
jobs to ICT job postings is the same as the ratio of core app economy
jobs to core App Economy job postings:
(2) Jobs(ICT)/Postings(ICT) = Jobs(App)/Postings(App)
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This is a reasonable assumption if the labor market process generating job
postings for core app economy jobs is roughly similar to the labor market
process generating job postings for ICT jobs. To put it another way, the
assumption is that companies go about looking for app developers the
same way they go about looking for software developers.
Note that the ratio of jobs to job postings (equation 2) can differ greatly
across countries and across occupational sectors of the economy. It can
also change over time.
DATA
The source of the job posting data is Indeed.co.in, which is the Indian site
for Indeed.com. Indeed, which calls itself the “#1 job site in the world,” has
job sites in more than sixty countries. For each country, Indeed provides an
API that accepts Boolean search expressions, and outputs the number of
job postings in that country tting those criteria.
We tend to use Indeed wherever possible because it gives us the ability to
use the same search terms in different countries and know that they will
behave consistently. This cross-country comparability is very important for
our project.
We compared Indeed.co.in with Naukri.com, which calls itself “India’s
No. 1 Job Site.” It’s worth noting that all job aggregators typically have
access to the same publicly available universe of job postings. For our
purposes, job aggregators globally differ by how aggressively they remove
duplicate ads, the algorithm they use for removing older jobs, and by how
consistently they implement Boolean search (including delimiters and
nested parentheses). Note that because job postings often appear on
multiple sites, the choice of how aggressively to ‘deduplicate’ similar but
not identical postings can make an enormous difference in counts.
For a set of IT-related search terms, we compared the job posting counts
generated by Indeed.co.in and Naukri.com on their default settings.
In some cases, Indeed.co.in, produced more listings and in some
cases Naukri.com produced more listings. Table 5 shows results for
selectedterms.
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Across the full set of IT-related search terms that we tested, Naukri.com
counts averaged about 30 percent higher than Indeed.co.in counts. It’s not
clear whether that’s because Naukri does less aggressive deduplication, or
is picking up jobs that Indeed.co.in is missing.
However, there are two important points. The key equation for our
methodology (1) relies on a ratio of job postings. If both Postings(APP) and
Postings(ICT) are 30 percent higher, the ratio will still stay the same.
Second, Naukri’s search algorithm appears to often automatically expand
the term ‘app’ to ‘application’. This may be helpful for job seekers, but it is
a problem for our methodology. Since in this context apps are a specic
subset of application, this property of Naukri’s search algorithm makes it
much more difcult to identify job postings that specically reference app
development, as opposed to application development. For that reason, we
stayed with the globally comparable Indeed.co.in counts.
TABLE 5: JOB POSTING COUNTS FOR SELECTED TERMS AS OF AUGUST 27, 2019
INDEED.CO.IN NAUKRI.COM
PERCENTAGE
DIFFERENCE
DATABASE
34003 54678 61%
JAVA
48907 44869 -8%
LINUX
16638 20441 23%
'MACHINE
LEARNING'
6137 5200 -15%
PYTHON
18217 24787 36%
'ROBOTIC
PROCESS
AUTOMATION'
678 605 -11%
SQL
39408 65078 65%
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The methodology consists of seven distinct steps.
1. Identication and validation of core App Economy job postings
Using summary statistics generated by searches on the Indeed
website, we identify online job postings containing one of the
following key words: “iOS” or “Android” or “Blackberry” or “Windows
Phone” or “Windows Mobile” or “app.” For each country, we use the
same English keyword list, appending national language terms as
appropriate. In India, after exploration using Hindi terms, we stayed
with the English keyword list.
By the nature of the data, a keyword search for core App Economy
workers will typically include some irrelevant job postings. For
example, the word “app” can appear in a job posting for a truck
driver who needs to use an app on the job.
In order to adjust for these and other irrelevant job postings, we
manually examine a sample of the job postings from step 1 to
eliminate those that do not t our criteria of a core App Economy
worker. This validation ratio yields us an estimate of Postings(App).
2. Identication and validation of ICT job postings
Our methodology relies on benchmarking information and
communications technology (ICT) job postings against an estimate
of ICT occupations. We construct a keyword list to identify ICT job
postings. For each country, we use the same English keyword list,
appending national language terms as appropriate. In India, after
preliminary analysis using Hindi terms, we stayed with the English
keyword list.
As in the previous step, we manually examine a sample of the
job postings to eliminate those that do not t our criteria of an
ICT occupation. This validation ratio yields us an estimate of
Postings(ICT).
3. Calculation of core app economy job postings as share of all
ICT job postings
We calculate Postings(App)/Postings(ICT), which gives us core
app economy job postings as a share of all ICT job postings. This
percentage differs between countries, but tends to be relatively
stable over time.
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4. Estimation of benchmark ICT employment
The question in India is what gure to use for Jobs(ICT). For over
sixty countries, the ILO reports the total number of information
and communications technology professionals (ISCO-08). For
other countries, such as Canada, the national statistics agencies
collect comparable gures. This category notably excludes “help
desk workers,” so we uniformly adjust this number by a small
percentageupwards.
India's Periodic Labour Force Survey yields a gure of roughly 2.7
million, including computing professionals, computer associate
professionals, and statisticians, plus the small upward adjustment
that we use globally. However, the structure of Indian ICT
employment is signicantly different than the US and European
countries, with a lot more emphasis on back ofce operations.
To get a comparable estimate for India, we draw on the Labour
Force Survey and two other pieces of data. First, NASSCOM pegs
Indian IT-BPM employment as roughly 4 million.
5
Alternatively,
an analysis of Github accounts by country suggests that India
has roughly 2 million ICT professionals.
6
Combining these three
gures judgmentally gives us an estimate of roughly 3 million
forJobs(ICT).
5. Estimation of core and total App Economy jobs
Using equation (1) at the beginning of the methodology section,
we estimate core App Economy jobs. Then we use a conservative
estimate of the multiplier effect. We assume that each core App
Economy job is associated with one indirect job at the same
company, and one spillover job elsewhere in the local area. To put
it another way, we assume that each job in the tech sector (core
+ indirect) generates 0.5 jobs elsewhere in the economy, for a 1.5
multiplier. This assumption is consistent with the latest research
on employment multipliers.
7
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6. Estimation of the jobs that belong to the iOS or Android
ecosystems
Out of the set of job postings containing the terms iOS or Android,
we identify the share that contain terms belonging to the iOS
ecosystem (containing one of the terms Apple, iPad, iPhone, or
iOS) and the share belonging to the Android ecosystem (containing
one of the terms Android or Google). We also do the same for the
shrinking Windows Mobile/Phone and Blackberry ecosystems, but
do not report these results.
Note that these shares add up to more than 100 percent, because
many job postings specify more than one mobile operating system
(i.e. looking for an iOS/Android developer). Thus, a single job can
belong to multiple ecosystems.
7. Estimating App Economy jobs for states, union territories, and
urban areas
We calculate the raw App Economy job postings in a state, territory
or urban areas as a share of App Economy job postings for the
entire country. Then we apply the resulting percentage to the
number of App Economy jobs in the country.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Michael Mandel is the chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute and a senior
fellow at Wharton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management. Elliott Long is senior economic policy
analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute.
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1 "Global Developer Population and Demographic Study 2019 Vol. 1," Evans Data Corporation.
https://evansdata.com/reports/viewRelease.php?reportID=9
2 “Number Of Smartphone Users In India Likely To Double To 859 Million By 2022,” Business Standard, May 2019.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-cm/number-of-smartphone-users-in-india-likely-to-double-to-859-million-
by-2022-119051000458_1.html
3 PPI has issued App Economy reports on United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Japan, Vietnam, Australia,
Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, and the countries of the European Union.
4 Rajat Kathuria, Sahana Roy Chowdhury, Mansi Kedia, and Sugandha Srivastav.2015. “An Inquiry into the Impact of India’s App Economy,”
ICRIER, April 2015. https://icrier.org/pdf/appreport.pdf.
5 “Strategic Review: IT-BPM Sector In India 2019: Decoding Digital,” NASSCOM.
https://www.nasscom.in/knowledge-center/publications/strategic-review-it-bpm-sector-india-2019-decoding-digital
6 https://www.benfrederickson.com/github-developer-locations/ provides a count of Github accounts by country. An analysis shows
a relationship between the number of Github accounts in a country and the number of ICT professionals, as reported by the ILO. In
particular, Mexico has just under 12 ICT professionals for every Github account. If we apply this ratio to the number of India’s Github
accounts, we get an estimated 2 million ICT professionals in India.
7 Timothy J. Bartik and Nathan Sotherland. 2019. "Realistic Local Job Multipliers." Policy Brief, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment
Research. https://doi.org/10.17848/pb2019-8.
The authors conservatively conclude that employment multipliers are around 2.0 at the state level in the United States, and about 1.5 at the
local level.
References
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